Dinghy cleaning and more sewing

Thursday 9 Apr, CY day 26: Some cruising people are unbelievable…

Bloody hot today. Totally windless and there is a heat haze like you get in Northern Europe on those rare baking hot summer days. We are nicely shaded in the cockpit, but without any breeze we get the heat radiating into the cockpit from the hot material of the sunshade. Several dips in the sea were needed to cool us off.

But no rest for the wicked. Today is our shopping day! The supermarkets will be shut for 4 days over Easter so gotta go today to restock fresh fruits, veg and dairy. So we head ashore immediately after breakfast while it’s still relatively cool. The queue is its usual length but seems slower today. And even under the constructed shades, sweat is soon running down our backs. And to make things worse, this time we also have face masks on… of sorts. Oana dug out 2 bandanas. In this heat, they feel very claustrophobic to wear. Finally, we are in the air conditioned shop. What a relief! And soon we feel chilled in our sweat soaked shirts.

The shelves are fully stocked as usual. The only empty shelf is toilet rolls. What is it about these? How can people be more worried about running out of loo paper than they are running out of food items? I just don’t get it. We buy less food than normal and at checkout we do our usual “guess what the bill will be?”. I’m sure we must be only around $100 today. Oana says $180. Sadly, Oana was spot on. $184 for 3 half filled bags of basics. Thank goodness supermarket is the only thing we have to spend money on here. That said, we are eternally grateful we have such a wonderful store so close to us. Many stranded cruisers certainly won’t have this luxury.

Just after getting back to Cloudy, the couple from the British Amel come passed for a chat. It seems we missed a real drama on the VHF yesterday. “Better than The Archers” they said (a famous British radio soap series). Two days ago, 2 French yachts, a cat and a sloop, very slowly drifted into the anchorage in the moonlight. One boat was displaying incorrect nav lights, the other had none! I listened to them on VHF talking to port security. They sounded educated voices and for some reason they were allowed to anchor rather than go on bouys, of which there are plenty. Well, apparently their drama unfolded yesterday.

They had left Honduras 3 weeks ago (it would be a 3 day passage for us!) and they are heading all the way upwind to Guadeloupe. Neither boat has a working engine, food, water, and propane. And there is a combined young crew of 12 onboard these 2 boats. They called port security asking to come ashore to provision, get water and propane… but they don’t want to check in and they don’t want to do the 14 days quarantine. Port security obviously tells them they absolutely cannot come ashore, but offers assistance with provisioning so that they can get on their way. Officer ask them for a shopping list and they will arrange someone to buy and deliver the food to the dock. But the yachts come back, without any word of gratitude, and further ask for someone to come out and fix one of their propane tanks that has a leaking valve and had emptied itself INTO their boat in just 24hrs! (this request is obviously denied).

They also say they can’t make a shopping list until they know if they can refill propane or not! And further, they need to know food prices before they can make their shopping list. They are told to bring their good propane bottle ashore along with their shopping list. The list gets to the supermarket where, amazingly, someone puts a price next to each item on the list and sends it back to port security. When the yachts learn the price tag would be $1500 they declare they don’t have that much money! They also have the nerve to complain the propane refill is too expensive at $50! (Hellooo, this is Cayman, not Honduras!). 2 hours later, back they go with their revised and greatly reduced shopping list. Pretty quickly the supermarket delivers the food to the dock. When they pick it up, they have to pay with 5 different credit cards!

In-between all this, port security calls them to tell them to stop going between their boats with the dinghy. It’s not allowed during lock-down. They complain, and say they are cruising together. But their dinghy gets lifted back on the deck. A little later the security again calls them… as now they are going between boats with a kayak! Which is also not allowed. So the kayak gets put away too. Then a while later another call. This time they are told to stop swimming between the boats! What a circus!
When they take their boats to fill with water and pickup the shopping, they have to do it by sail. It takes them 30mins to drift the 200m to the dock as the wind is virtually zero. At least it seems they are quite skilled to handle their boats without engines.

After all that drama, an English voice comes on the radio and asks if it’s possible to get back to the UK. “Stand-by” he is told. As luck would have it, the BA government charter flight is here and about to depart. After 5 minutes Port Security respond “do you have a credit card that will accept £500 charge?” “Yes.” “Can you confirm again you have been at sea for 3 weeks and had no contact with other boats?” “Yes.” “Can you get ashore in 15 minutes, ready to go?” After a pause, the English guy comes back saying it would take more than 15 minutes to get the dinghy in the water, could someone come pick him up? “Negative” security responds. “Ok, I’m coming in on kayak and someone will swim behind to take the kayak back to the boat”. And that’s how he gets ashore and catches the plane (the only plane that has been on the island since lock-down). Clearly, same as port security, he has had enough of his fellow crew members! Can we say again “what a circus!?” 🙂 With a good laugh this time. We feel for the port authority officer, despite all this he was very helpful and polite, but clearly lost some of the patience by the end.

Early evening the two yachts request permission to stay another 3 days. They say if they leave now, they will just drift westwards. In 3 days there will be wind for them to sail east. But by now, the authorities are clearly totally fed up with this gang and tell them very clearly, wind or no wind they must leave NOW! So this explains why I saw them last evening drifting out to sea, west with the current, but with their bows pointing to the east! We wonder, where will they end up next? Guadeloupe is at least 1000 miles upwind. I doubt the catamaran will even go upwind! And we can’t stop comment “this is the sort of people who then call to be rescued”.

The afternoon sees us taking several dips in the sea to cool off. And rather than remove the bimini as planned, I get stuck into cleaning the dinghy. I have a great Starbright liquid which both cleans and protects the hyperlon material. I just about finish the top of the dinghy by sunset. The bottom will be done in the morning. It looks like new again 🙂

In the evening I sew some bits and pieces for the solar panels to go on the bimini. A long thin velcroed panel that will go down the bimini center to hide and protect all the wires. There was quite a bit of cursing. For some reason, the machine kept dropping stitches. What should have been simple sewing really tested my patience, right up to midnight.